Chronos banned me from the Passengers thread. (Spoilers)

About This Message Board
1

So we’ve got a thread about how people shouldn’t see Passengers because it glorifies rape culture because one of the plot points involves a character who relieved his extreme isolation by waking up someone else from stasis and had (voluntary) sex with her. The tone of the thread in most of the first few posts was along the lines of “oh, I was interested, but boo patriarchy! boo rape glorification! I definitely won’t see it for myself!”

This attitude, quite frankly, is alarming to me. Sci-fi is traditionally a medium that throws people into extreme or foreign situations and examines an idea from there. “If you were stranded on a space ship, alone, for 90 years, what would you do? Would you wake someone else up to keep your sanity? How would you handle it if you did? Would you keep it from them? What are the moral implications of this?” is a perfectly interesting sci-fi idea. But if we’re increasingly influenced by people who are professionally offended and dedicated to finding the machinations of the patriarchy, we’re going to suppress challenging art.

And yes, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know how it treats the issue other than that people who have seen it say that it’s addressed as a plot issue. But neither have all the people who decided that it was a horrible rape-glorifying propoganda film. And I’m not the one trying to shun it - I was the one suggesting people have an open mind and come to their own conclusions about it. Others in the thread suggest that the movie doesn’t even know it’s presenting challenging ideas, but someone who has seen it indicates that it certainly does.

Now, Chronos himself or herself might’ve posted the most insulting, exaggerated thing in the thread:

I suppose it depends on how strongly you interpret his or her condemnation, but to me it suggests that he thinks people who would be willing to see a popular sci-fi movie are creepy or dangerous. Based off one clearly biased, agenda-driven internet review. That seems a bit much to me.

My posts are all on page 2. And then…

Yes, I’m posting this in ATMB. Since my issue with this is with him acting as a moderator, that’s the appropriate place, rather than the Pit, right?

Telling people they’re “flipping out” is a really easy way to try to take the upper hand in a discussion without actually having to specifically say where they’re going wrong or, in this case, what rule they’ve violated. I should’ve been told what personal insults I gave or what other board rule I violated. Simply saying I’m “flipping out” is pretty unsatisfying.

It’s also rather silly. I’m posting on a message board, in text, with messages that take several minutes to write, over a period of several hours or days. It’s pretty unlikely I’m sitting here “flipping out”, writing everything up in some sort of rage. Furthermore, every point I made was supported with further explanation. I wasn’t just randomly shouting explitives or rolling my face on the keyboard or whatever “flipping out” is supposed to entail.

It seems to me that if I violated a specific rule, like insults, that should’ve been noted. If my tone was over the line, the usual way of handling these things is to tell all parties involved to cool off (and Derleth was certainly taking a hostile tone with me), not to go right to banning someone from a thread right off the bat. As far as I know, I don’t have some sort of record as a perpetual shit-stirrer or someone who goes into certain sorts of threads and causes trouble regularly, so I don’t think this is based off a certain pattern.

Given that Chronos was one of the people who decided to shun the movie based off this review, and what seems like an unusual procedural not-warning-but-still-thread-banned moderation may have been him using his mod status to push out someone whose views on the subject he didn’t like.

And if anything, I would suggest his or her own implication that anyone who would see the movie is someone you’d be scared or disgusted to be in a theather with is a stronger generalized insult than anything I said.

Yes, I know the result of this thread is “the moderators discussed it and we’ve decided that the moderation in this instance was super duper correct” because that’s the only result that ever happens. United front over all else. But here’s my token protest anyway.

2

I grant that Chronos’s non-moderating post was hyperbolic. I also agree that some of the other posts in that thread were ultra-sensitive but these are opinions and that’s what the thread is about, opinions.

Chronos’s moderating post however was spot on. You were getting far too heated over a movie and I think he did you a favor by banning you from the thread.

3

On the contrary, the most hostile post would’ve been the first one, where I used some caps and sarcastically paraphrased the shunning positions. My posts afterwards were to flesh out my arguments about the nature of challenging work and trying to shun things that even touch certain subjects. My later posts were less combative so I don’t think it’s fair to characterize me as spinning out of control and needing to silence me before it crossed the line. That wasn’t the trajectory.

4

You were going after other posters in a pretty jerkish fashion, SB. Personal attacks. Now, those other posters were responding with personal attacks against you, too, so I can see where it was appropriate for a moderator to step in and take steps to calm things down. Personally, I would have just told everyone, especially you, to “calm things down” before banning someone from a thread. But that’s just me.

5

Looks like two of us added ‘Spoilers’ to the thread title. Damn you, Bone!

Anyway, I’m not a CS moderator, but here’s a tip: not every instance where you think something’s going all PC - a position I may or may not disagree with - is a good instance to bitch about it in public. A new thread, a restatement of principles, something.

What you really were up to is hijacking a CS thread into Great Debates. Wonderful, good art - even bad art, hopefully - can lead to real debate. But insisting the debate takes place then and there is poor form. Chronos was right in asking you to give it a rest.

As for your ‘specific rule’ complaint? That’s why we have the ‘don’t be a jerk’ bit as rule number one.

6

I don’t agree with this. Looked like other posters were going after Senor Beef, to me. I don’t understand this “banning” at all. Why not just ask everyone to calm down? There was a lot of heat in that thread and not all from one source.

7

I’m not sure I understand. The OP of that thread and most of the first few responses were urging people not to see the movie based on an assumption that because the movie portrays sex and deception that it must glorify rape. (It’s also very strange to me that consexual sex without all of the information is somehow worse than condemning someone to live their entire life in essentially an isolated prison).

How would I present the idea that people should see for themselves before judging it and that because the movie contains a plot point that deals with an issue doesn’t mean it’s thoughtless or glorifying without “insisting the debate takes place then and there”? What more appropriate place is there to debate the merits of shunning a movie because it contains a certain sort of plotline than in the very thread that’s attempting to shun the movie? Am I supposed to start a seperate “You should consider seeing Passengers if you were otherwise interested rather than shun it due to the assumption that it glorifies rape” thread rather than respond in that thread?

I was expecting something like “you used too many caps” or “you were too mocking when you paraphrased the positions of other people in this thread” as the explanation, not what you suggest which is more along the lines of “you shouldn’t disagree with the OP in a cafe society thread about a movie”

I’m not trying to be disrespectful in saying this - I appreciate your attempt to explain this as an outside source - I just don’t feel like your explanation resonates with me nor with the general purpose of this board and that forum.

8

You don’t agree with what? Here is what I was talking about wrt SB:

That’s an attack the poster, not the post comment.

9

That’s an attack? I raised a lot of points, which he then ignored and just repeated the “you’re actually the one who needs the safe space!” line of argument. If you try to engage someone in debate with arguments and specific points, and they just sweep it all aside to repeat their insult at you, it would seem to me that pointing out that they’re not actually responding to your argument is appropriate (and an attack on their posts towards you, not the poster). It’s not like I said “you’re too dumb to be able to argue with me!” but rather that his posts were clearly not actually responding to and had no intention to respond to what I said.

10

Then why didn’t Derleth get modded when he attacked Senor Beef?

That he admits to later?

And attacks the poster again.

I have no dog in this fight but at least be consistent.

11

Chronos did what members have been asking for since I’ve been here. He stopped something that might have had an undesirable ending. I think using this option is far better than a stack of warnings flying around a thread.

12

I was expecting some epic train wreck of thread. IMO at best it was some creaking train wheels for a pretty darn small number of posts.

A calm down or two note to everyone IMO would have been more than enough.

13

I think Senor Beef’s points in the other thread were valid, interesting and worthy of debate. No one addressed the moral issues he raised: Wasn’t the “kidnapping”, with or without any sex, worse than the “rape”? What would have been the reaction with genders reversed?

Yes, Mr. Beef discussed his issues with much excitement and drama, and took the responses personally. But I can relate to such emotional demeanor! :slight_smile: :smack:

14

Then he should have started such a debate in GD, as Jonathan Chance commented above.

15

I think the Mod did SenorBeef a favour in that thread.

16

You’ll have to ask a moderate that question. I noted in my first post that I thought other posters were “doing it, too”. I also said I thought the mod instruction should have been directed at the others. However, I was responding to someone who seemed to think that SB was not doing it.

17

No, he wasn’t. This is a topic which has always been the subject of CS threads - just search for “Hays Code” and you’ll see the proof of that.

18

So SenorBeef was getting too intense for the forum. Fine. That’s something that has been moderated before.

But read the rest of his OP. He has a good question. Why did Chronos jump right to banning him from the thread, rather than first just telling everyone to calm down? Why didn’t he do a topic ban, telling everyone to open a new thread in GD if they wanted to discuss the PC topic?

After that, then I’d support a thread ban instead of going straight to a Warning. But not before at least trying the normal techniques that have worked more often than not.

Given how this is normally handled, and the nature of assuming that SenorBeef could not restrain himself if told to do so, I fully understand the OP feeling singled out. Especially considering that Chronos had been one of the posters that SenorBeef was trying to rebut.

Derleth was no less out of line for that forum. He even admitted he was making fun of SenorBeef. This should have been a “Derleth, SenorBeef: take this PC topic to a thread in GD or the Pit if you must. Everyone else, I’m declaring that subject offtopic for this thread.” Or a better worded version of the same.

19

Thanks for clearing that up.

20

I’m really getting tired of the newish Mr. Rogers-Board atmosphere here. Look, the vast majority of people here are grownups and won’t wither and die if someone casts a harsh word in their direction (the few notable wimps who can’t take some heated debate can find some other board where all the corners are rounded and they’re wrapped in bubble-pack).

Can we please consider rolling back these stupid sissified rules and allow some heated debate without the mods getting the vapors?

And especially can we stop the stupid preemptive mod-notes/warnings? Future-crime is a stupid idea in a movie, it’s even more stupid in terms of moderation. Someone’s right up against the rules, mod-note them and if they cross the line, warn 'em. Stop “protecting” people.